Nazim Hikmet : Born in 1902 in what was then the Ottoman Empire, Hikmet went on to write multiple epic works, including Human Landscapes from My Country: An Epic Novel in Verse. The following poets, as well as many others, are known for their work in the epic form.ĭante Alighieri: The author of La Commedia ( The Divine Comedy), Dante Alighieri was born Durante Alighieri in Florence, Italy, in 1265.Īnne Carson: A poet, playwright, and classicist, Carson is the author of numerous genre-defying works that borrow from the epic form, including The Autobiography of Red. Examples such as The Cantos by Ezra Pound, Maximus by Charles Olson, The Anniad by Gwendolyn Brooks, The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You by Frank Stanford, The Iovis Trilogy by Anne Waldman, and Paterson by William Carlos Williams all push and pull at the boundaries of the genre, re-envisioning the epic through the lens of modernism. In the twentieth century and beyond, poets expanded the epic genre further with a renewed interest in the long poem with the canto. The epic has also been used to formalize mythological traditions in many cultures, such as the Norse mythology in Edda and Germanic mythology in Nibelungenlied, and more recently, the Finnish mythology of Elias Lönnrot’s Kalevala. Some epics of note include Beowulf, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh. Over time, the epic has evolved to fit changing languages, traditions, and beliefs.
Greek and Latin epics frequently open with an invocation to the muse, as is shown in the opening lines of The Odyssey. Homeric verse is characterized by the use of extended similes and formulaic phrases, such as epithets, to fill out the verse form. Both of Homer’s epics are composed in dactylic hexameter, which became the standard for Greek and Latin oral poetry. Many of the world’s oldest written narratives are in epic form, including the Babylonian Gilgamesh, the Sanskrit Mahâbhârata, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and Virgil’s Aeneid. The word "epic" comes from Latin epicus and from Greek epikos, meaning "a word a story poetry in heroic verse." The elements that typically distinguish epics include superhuman deeds, fabulous adventures, highly stylized language, and a blending of lyrical and dramatic traditions, which also extend to defining heroic verse.
Epic is a long, often book-length, narrative in verse form that retells the heroic journey of a single person, or group of persons.
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